


deancas ficlets

by vaudelin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaudelin/pseuds/vaudelin
Summary: short fics that are dean and/or cas-centric
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	1. (THREAD)BARE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cas hummed appreciatively. Dean glanced over his shoulder. He caught Cas staring at his ass again. “Hey now.” Dean snapped his fingers, to which Cas lazily dragged his gaze along Dean’s body. “My eyes are up here.”_

“What about this one?” Dean asked, snatching the next shirt from the drawer. He held it against his chest and turned in one swift motion.

Cas lifted his gaze from where he’d been staring at Dean’s underwear, his expression falling into a mockery of pensiveness. His bare leg swiveled on the bed, his foot tapping a rhythm against the bedspread. Dean could call him on his inattention, but frankly he enjoyed it. “Toss it.”

“Really?” Dean held out the shirt, looking over the faded logo. It was a band shirt. He knew that much. Which band it belonged to was another question entirely. He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. “It’s so soft…”

Cas sighed. “Then keep it.”

Dean pursed his lips. He tossed the shirt into the ‘maybe’ pile, and grabbed the next one.

Cas hummed appreciatively. Dean glanced over his shoulder. He caught Cas staring at his ass again. “Hey now.” Dean snapped his fingers, to which Cas lazily dragged his gaze along Dean’s body. “My eyes are up here.”

Cas nodded, dutiful. His attention dropped immediately down Dean’s bare chest.

Dean took the moment to hold the next plaid shirt up against his chest. “Verdict?”

Cas scrunched his nose in a way that was too cute for Dean to handle. “There are holes in it.”

Dean paled. “Really?”

“Right elbow.”

Dean stretched out the arm of blue and black, clucking his tongue. “Damn. I liked this one.”

Cas hummed again. Dean didn’t have to look to know that Cas was luxuriating in his sheets again.

“How long are we doing this?” Cas asked, once the dresser drawer was empty, and Dean had moved on to reviewing his jeans. “I thought you liked all the clothes you kept.”

Dean shrugged. “I know. Just… looking to downsize. Y’know. Make room for your own stuff.”

“Do you want me to stop borrowing your shirts?”

“What? No.” Dean stumbled through rising from a crouch. “I love it. I just…”

_I just saw the seams ripped on some, when you wore them. Saw how threadbare the rest looked. Realized I never threw clothes away unless they were bloody or shredded. Realized I was scared of letting go of shirts and shoes before they were run into the ground._

Cas rose from where he lounged against Dean’s pillows, the bedsheets falling as he sat upright. Figuring he was owed as much for being ogled all night, Dean made no effort to hide how his eyes wandered down Cas’ bare chest.

Even-keeled, even when fully naked, Cas crossed the room with little fanfare. He scooped up his trench coat from where it lay across the back of Dean’s chair, turned and made a fuss out of draping it across Dean’s shoulders.

This close, Dean felt the heat of Cas’ breath against his cheeks. Heard the growl in Cas’ throat as his voice dropped impossibly lower, growing husky and thick as a whiskey burn. “Better.”

Dean couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Really?” He swiveled his hips, making a show out of swaying the trench coat out around his waist. “You like seeing me running around in my underwear and this?”

Cas leaned in close, rasping his cheek against Dean’s neck. “You like when I wear your clothes. This is the same.”

Scoffing, Dean allowed Cas to tuck himself inside the trench coat, draping his arms around Dean’s waist. Dean reeled Cas into arms in turn, hooking his chin over Cas’ bare shoulders. Their impromptu hug lingered as Dean dropped his arms and resumed his swaying.

“Sam’s not gonna enjoy our new looks,” Dean murmured, mouth brushing the shell of Cas’ ear. He ran his hands over the planes of Cas’ back, swooping over spine and rib and shoulder.

Cas harrumphed some sort of reply, banked between disinterest in their conversation and keen interest in what Dean was doing with his hands. He snuck his own broad hands into the back of Dean’s underwear and gave a meaty squeeze.

Dean yelped, rocking into Cas, and Cas hummed, pleased at his response. Dean spared a moment to look sufficiently annoyed with Cas before rolling his eyes and accepting the proffered kiss.

Against Dean’s cheek, the both of them softly swaying, Cas murmured, “Keep your clothes, Dean. I like everything you wear.”

“Back at you,” Dean replied, a grin in his voice.

At Cas’ gentle prodding, the trench coat fell from Dean’s shoulders, replaced by stubbled hickeys in its wake.


	2. (THREAD)BARE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It felt silly, to put so much emphasis on finding such a small scrap of metal. But Dean had carried his mother’s ring for over twenty years without incident. Had kept the small fragment of her memory tucked away in the corner of his wallet. Had handed it over to Mary only when she’d asked, in passing, whatever had happened to her wedding ring._

Sleep no longer came easily to Dean, as summer faded its way into fall. Months had passed since it happened, but his mind remained fixated on a place, on a time. 

The melting winter snow, flash-evaporated with a burst of ethereal power.

The scorched earth that marked the place where Mary’s body never had the chance to fall. 

Dean closed his eyes and found himself there, again and again.

He couldn’t move forward, not without seeing whether it was there.

And so on a night of little import, Dean dressed in the dark with his boots and leather coat. While his brother lay sleeping, Dean ducked out from the bunker with a metal detector in hand.

It felt silly, to put so much emphasis on finding such a small scrap of metal. But Dean had carried his mother’s ring for over twenty years without incident. Had kept the small fragment of her memory tucked away in the corner of his wallet. Had handed it over to Mary only when she’d asked, in passing, whatever had happened to her wedding ring.

Considering everything he’d been through during that time, Dean felt it was reasonable to consider the ring indestructible. 

A good luck talisman. At least, until the end.

The atmosphere of the cabin breathed out cold and wet around him, as Dean stepped out from banked heat housed in the Impala. Beyond the cabin, at the back, a patchwork quilt of leaves covered what had once been the blast site, the barren earth now blanketed in a gradient of oranges and red. 

Dean shook the chill from his arms, stomped his boots before he began kicking aside clumps of leaves. The metal detector skimmed dead black soil, unable to hold life even a full season since its evisceration.

As Dean moved, the aches of the past months settled deeply into his bones, his muscles cramping after even the briefest bout of effort. It hadn’t been easy, dealing with the aftermath of Chuck’s betrayal. It had meant long hours on the road, endless days spent fighting battles they’d already fought a decade ago. Though Sam was his constant, it was made worse for the fact that Dean was doing it all without his best friend.

Dean shut his eyes, let his body swing the detector in its typical arc ahead of him. 

He kept a list of texts drafted on his phone, a full litany of messages he hadn’t had the courage to send. Justifications for the things he had said, knee-deep in his grief and wrath. Apologies for the things he shouldn’t have, regardless of how Dean had meant them at the time. Confessions that he should have given to Cas, should have told him before Cas had felt it necessary to step away.

Dean’s back involuntarily straightened as the metal detector pinged, his body struck by the sudden ricochet. Dean crouched, his mind forcibly kept blank, and sifted his trembling hand through the pinging pile of dirt.

Beneath the leaves, the earth was cloying and damp, slickened by the latest batch of autumn showers Kansas had to offer. Dean’s fist closed around a lump of soil with something solid lodged within it. 

Barely breathing, Dean made himself accept that it was a stone before he dared relinquish his grip.

The dirt parted smoothly beneath the pad of his thumb, sloughing away from silver metal. Dean ran his nail over the exterior of the ring, searching for nicks. Finding none. He wiped his dirty hand on his jeans, swapping his hold from one hand to the other. With the bottom edge of his shirt, Dean polished this small piece of his mother’s memory until it glistened, clean.

After three years without, his mother’s ring returned to its worn corner of his wallet. 

A good luck talisman. Even after the end.


	3. BANISHED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There was a light—” Dean swallowed. ‘I thought I saw it.”_
> 
> _“Yeah, me too,” said Sam carefully._

It took until the dust had settled for Dean to realize something was wrong.

No, before that.

At the height of their fight with the witches. The flash of light that had come from behind him, source unknown. Dean’s body had been primed for battle, his mind working through the best way to disarm his opponent, but his gut recognized the light as something he’d seen before.

The hue and quality was something he associated with the death of something celestial.

Considering there was only one angel in their company, it meant nothing good for them.

“Cas?” Dean swept his flashlight around the decrepit living room, empty now that the witch was dead at his feet. With his call left unanswered, Dean moved hurriedly toward the hall.

“Where’s Cas?” he asked Sam, found in the next room over. He fought to keep worry from entering his voice.

Sam was positioned on the other side of the room, crouched over the body of the second witch. His flashlight moved with his gaze as he glanced up from his examination, first to look at Dean, then to survey the rest of the room. “He’s not with you?”

Dean shook his head. “Lost sight of him once I got tossed through a wall.”

Sam’s frown appeared, growing to match Dean’s fearful expression. Wordlessly, Sam rose to his feet to join Dean in his search for Cas.

As it happened, they found Cas by tripping over one of his legs, splayed open by the hall where Dean killed the first witch. At first Dean cursed his stumble, and then when the flashlight crossed over Cas’ prone body, he cursed for entirely different reasons.

“Cas?” Dean dropped to his knees, hand rising instinctively toward Cas’ neck. He felt for a pulse point, then second-guessed and shone his flashlight at Sam. “Did he—Sam, is he—?”

Sam’s mouth was a thin line.

“There was a light—” Dean swallowed. ‘I thought I saw it.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Sam carefully.

Shaking, Dean looked over Cas’ face, his parted lips and opened eyes, staring sightless at the ceiling. He bowed an ear above Cas’ mouth and listened for a sound that wasn’t there.

Cas had made a habit of breathing, hadn’t he? Dean thought he did, but he couldn’t remember.

“Does he breathe?” asked Dean, neck craning for Sam. “I don’t remember—But he’s not—His body’s not breathing—”

Kneeling beside him, Sam carefully peeled Cas’ trench coat away from his body. “I don’t see any puncture wounds.”

Dean cursed. Carefully, he drew an arm under Castiel’s head, cradling his neck in the crook of Dean’s elbow.

Castiel’s eyes were open, as bright and empty as the summer sky.

Dean took Castiel’s arm and crossed it over his body, grasping his cool hand in Dean’s numb one.

“C’mon, Cas,” murmured Dean, stroking his thumb along the side of Castiel’s hand.

In answer, Cas remained still.

Distantly, Dean was aware of the shock setting into his body, his nerves shaking apart like pennies stacked on a railroad track. His mind waded through black water, plunging him up to his neck in grief.

Sam’s hand settled on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing.

 _Not again_ , Dean thought, reality seeping through him. _Goddamnit, not again_.

“Dean,” said Sam.

Dean’s arm curled without volition, tucking Castiel tightly against his chest. Dean folded over, sucking in a tight breath.

No pulse. No breathing. But that was normal, right?

“C’mon, Cas,” murmured Dean again, this time directly into Castiel.

A roar filled the air, the noise building like thunder in the distance. Dean glanced up as the picture frames lining the hall began to shake against the walls, the empty light fixtures above them swaying in an uneven tempo.

An unearthly light built outside the windows of the house, its pearlescent hue cutting through decades of dirt and grime.

Glass panes cracked as the roaring, ringing noise built into a crescendo. Dean dropped his hold on Castiel’s body, his eyes shut as both hands rose to block his ears from the wailing sound.

In a sudden flash, every dead light bulb and window pane smashed around them. For a moment the air glittered with impossible light.

Behind his closed eyes, Dean felt the world’s glow concentrating into a point in front of him, so scaldingly bright he felt blinded. Then a gasping breath came and the light was gone, replaced instead by a sudden warmth Dean felt gripping both his wrists.

Dean opened his eyes cautiously, dropped his hands only after Cas’ gentle coaxing pried them away. A soft glow was fading beneath Cas’ skin, briefly illuminating his soft smile.

Behind Dean, Sam’s garbled noise of shock shook Dean out of his stupor. They were suddenly too close. Dean reluctantly withdrew himself from Cas’ hands.

“She banished me from my vessel,” Cas said, in answer to Sam’s unasked question. “I’m fine,” he added, in answer to Dean’s.

Absently, Dean nodded. He couldn’t stop himself from patting at Cas, his hand resting on the juncture of Cas’ neck and shoulder. Beneath his palm came the reassuring thud of Cas’ pulse, the rise and fall of Cas’ body as he breathed.

Cas cupped his hand atop Dean’s, resting it there as if to reassure Dean the touch was welcome, that Cas was here and alive and there was no reason for Dean to have worried he could have ever been otherwise.

It was too much for Dean to hold inside his body. He leaned in, pulling Cas into his arms, and held Cas so fiercely his fear had no choice but to bleed away.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Dean muttered as he pulled back.

Even without his celestial light, Cas’ eyes shone warm and bright as summer rain.


	4. REXFORD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Castiel swatted a fly buzzing around him, stinging atop his sunburnt skin._
> 
> _His Father never felt farther away than He did lately._

It seldom rained in Rexford, this late into the summer. 

The endless stretch of sunny days gave Castiel ample opportunity to wander, on his short, infrequent work breaks at the Gas-N-Sip. His walks grew longer once his shift was done, but all lingered in the neighborhood where he spent his days.

Initially, Castiel toured the dusty sidewalks that delineated the Gas-N-Sip’s block from its surroundings. He wanted to know the area in which he lived, however surreptitiously in the storage room, and worked. The spot where he settled down human roots was nothing exciting, just gas stations and strip malls. People treated the Gas-N-Sip like a stepping stone. A pitstop between one place and the next.

Castiel made a habit out of crossing the street on the far side of the block. The buildings there were older, sagging with the weight of failed histories. He often headed past an empty lot of old foundation and crumbling layers of cracked asphalt. One half of the lot was boxed in by an abandoned dental office, the other by a floundering café. 

Fox tails grew along the lot’s edges, their bushy tails burnishing the chain fence on the far side. Castiel liked to hold his palm over the grass and let the wind bring it to him. The sun painted sweat onto his warming skin.

A girl sometimes sat in the ruins, amid the grass and debris at the back of the café. Younger than Castiel, though that did not narrow down much. Her hands sat in the pocket of a black apron, fingers fiddling with a notepad and the plastic packet enabling her cigarette breaks. 

Oftentimes, she would look up as Castiel walked by, her dead eyes fixated on some place far away. It made Castiel think about distant places, too. Inevitably, he would pick up the pace, at least until the feeling dulled again.

When the commercial scenery grew tired, Castiel stretched his walks out into the surrounding neighborhoods. He walked until the stucco-faced storefronts were swallowed whole by residential greens, trees and bushes rising in front of small houses faced with brick and vinyl siding.

Electoral signs came in shades of red in Rexford. Only one type of church was built, that Castiel could find, where only one type of churchgoers attended. 

Castiel stood for long stretches outside of these places of worship, watching its people come and go. He waited to feel the tug that would pull him back in. Make him one of them. 

Castiel swatted a fly buzzing around him, stinging atop his sunburnt skin.

His Father never felt farther away than He did lately. 

Sometimes, Castiel’s work break and the café girl’s work break coincided. He would walk by her stone perch amid the sprawling weeds, slowing but not stopping, not unless she signaled that she wanted him to. 

Broken glass glimmered on the asphalt between them. The sunset shone in fragments, ones that ground into powder beneath Castiel’s tired feet.

During those times the girl waved him over, Castiel would sit on a cement block not far from hers, him in his blue vest, her in her black apron. She would pass him a cigarette that did not smell like a cigarette. He would puff on it for a while, filling his body with a physical ache that drowned out all emotions. Exhaling slowly, he would return to being a husk that longed for a home with every tedious heartbeat in his breast. 

Castiel puffed a little while longer, then passed the not-cigarette back to the girl. 

The times they repeated this ritual went beyond what Castiel could count on his fingers. The words they spoke between them during these times did not.

There was emotion held in these few blocks of Rexford, one that didn’t need vocalizing in order to be shared. Castiel knew the girl just as well as she knew him. 

They both had places they would rather be.


End file.
